Slave Deeds of North Carolina

North Carolina Registers of Deeds in conjunction with UNCG University Libraries and North Carolina Division of Archives and Records, and others have undertaken the North Carolina Slave Index Project to create a unique, centralized database of bills of sales indexing the names of enslaved people from across North Carolina.

It is our hope that families and genealogists will be able to take the information provided to arrive at a historical timeline for generations of North Carolinians.

Currently, we have over 900 records referring to slaves dating to April 2, 1789. The most recent record indicating a sale of an individual is December 15, 1864. Click here to access our database.

The Slave Index Project was started by former Register of Deeds, Rebecca Cipriani (1998-2016) on December 16, 2015, and continued during the administrations of Honorable Amy Simpson (2016) and Honorable Benjamin Curtis (2016-current). The vast majority of the research for this 3-year project was completed by former Deputy Marisa Halm.